Motel Rooms and Misunderstandings
For the day one prompt of the @startrekfemslashweek: only one bed! 1.4k words, G, no warnings
Summary: Modern AU. Michael is feeling down about her not-relationship with her boss, Philippa Georgiou, and her own lack of plans for her vacation days. To get away from it all, she throws some clothes into her backpack and starts driving without a destination in mind: anywhere that isn't home sounds just about right. When she stops at a motel for the night, she's surprised to see a familiar face...
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of Mosquito Nets and Safety
"Perhaps, Michael thinks, Philippa was right and they really needed this vacation. It's certainly a change of pace from the day to day life on the Shenzhou, where they never quite stop being Captain and Commander first, lovers second."
Some Shenzhou-Era established Milippa vacation fluff for the @discoveryfemslashfortnight 'intimacy'! 1k, T.
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D'v: "Hahaa... we're holding hands again... I’m so sorry I wasn't watching where I was going and I was just reading up on--well what I was reading wasn’t important--I was..."
T'l: silent Vulcan noises and depraved illogical thoughts
some artist’s notes and fic snippets below the break:
Getting the pose right was a nightmare!
I drew Tendi and T’lyn on different layers with different colors because otherwise it’d be too confusing. The mess going on in their legs and hands especially. It was a challenge to find a relatively natural looking pose that allowed their hands to match up without hiding anything important. I found i could draw a four-segment stick-figure limb connecting their shoulders, and that helped me get their arms right. The legs were also a mess to figure out, but mostly just because they’re a confusing mess of limbs--they don’t have to intertwine nice.
Also, T’lyn is going to make me learn to draw hands right I swear to god. I could not half-ass the hands on this one.
narrative snipets break:
at that second panel, when Tendi realizes what's happened and gets embarassed, she immediately like, tries to let go and raise her hands respectfully......... but t'lyn just... doesn't let go. for a moment.
Ray Daly’s contribution. (Actually Ray contributed to feedback while I was drawing it, but...)
Mariner: it couldn't have been that bad, tendi
Tendi, still flustered: not that bad?? Not that bad?!? would it be fine if you tripped and Bradward’s D--?!
Mariner: eekaaay! you've made your point!!
Earlier version when I thought I was finished:
It’s good to go the extra mile on your art. I think this plainer version would still have been fine, but since I went so far as to actually draw the background for a change, adding the dropped/thrown clutter (PADDs and Tricorder) helped a lot.
T’lyn and Tendi’s mess of legs was hard to differentiate (though adding the shading helps). I made Tendi’s pants slightly darker, though with the shading you can barely tell. I also gave them different boot colors. The original idea was that pure science officers have black and blue boots and medical officers have white and blue boots. We can see that in a few places in season 1. But it seems like they eventually abandoned that concept and just give all science officers white and blue boots. T’lyn is not a medical officer, so obviously she gets black boots. Technically since Tendi is in Senior Science Officer training instead of Medical, she should have black boots, but I gave her white boots so you could tell them apart more easily.
I wasn’t even going to add the facial expressions. I drew this to figure out which one I wanted to use:
Then I put it in the drawing.
But I just kept looking at the sketch and thinking “both are good. Both are good!”
So I made it two panels. Because of how the layers were set up this was easier said than done. But I managed it just fine in the end. I really like how she’s backlit by the ceiling lights in the inset panels. Some kind of like, contrast between the angelic goddess looking down at you and the reality that she’s an emotional mess who wears her emotions on her sleeve.
It was also really important to add the inset panels because I don’t want to give the impression that either Tendi is doing this on purpose nor any orion fem dom stereotypes. It’s way funnier and cuter if she just keeps accidentally finding herself in these scenarios, worried that T’lyn’s resentment for her is growing because SHE KEEPS AVOIDING ME OUTSIDE OF STUDY SESSIONS! AND WHEN WE MAKE EYE CONTACT SHE LOOKS AWAY! I FUCKED UP! but actually T’lyn is just struggling to control her mad nasty thoughts about just what she’d like to do to Tendi (she’d like to hold her hands some more)
Adding the inset panels lets me make sure Tendi’s character is adequately captured so she’s not just A Thing Happening To T’lyn.
The dropped PADDs and Tricorder make the scene seem more diagetic, and just more real/plausible. They’re busy looking at their PADDs and not looking where they’re going, see? The one that’s face down is T’lyn’s, the two face up are Tendi’s. The PADD screens are cropped screenshots from the show that have been edited and then skewed/rotated/rescaled into place
The first PADD is Tendi doing research on Vulcan touch telepathy (after being told by someone else what the significance of handholding is to Vulcans), the second one is actually breaking the fourth wall and addressing the viewer directly.
one of the last touches I added was to erase the line-art around her pupils, so the pupils would look smaller (aids to the feeling of shock) and add a nostril (Dunno why--I never draw nostrils on Lower Decks characters, but it just seemed correct in this case) and a little wrinkle on her eye. All this was added because, when I drew Tendi’s face, it felt more detailed than T’lyn’s for some reason (freckles I think?) and I felt I had to make them match.
T’lyn’s face here was fun and took a while to get right. She (and all Vulcans in Lower Decks) are usually half-lidded, but we see T’lyn’s kinda shock when Tendi grabs her hand in the One Canon T’lyndi Scene We Have At Least Until Next Year--even then she looks attentive, not necessarily shocked.
I just think it’s kind of cool that they both have non-red blood and colorful blush.
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